ShhhhhSharks!!!! and shark dissection!

Marine biology is a blast!!  Well maybe not a blast for the poor creatures that had to die so that students can

image from the web

learn science hands on.  Last week, we picked apart a sea star and this week, a shark!  I have to say, sharks have always been a fascination of mine.  I love sharks but I am not quite sure why, I just do!

First the classification of sharks.
Kingdom- Animalia
Phylum- Chordata
Class- Chondrichthyes -(cartilaginous fish)
Subclass- Elasmobranchii
Superorder- Selachimorpha

A few shark factoids:
~Did you know that until the 16th century, sharks were referred to as seadogs?
~Did you know that there are over 400 types of sharks?
~It has been estimated that at least 30 of those 400 types have attacked humans.
~Sharks have been around in some form for about 400 million years.
~Sharks are apex creatures (at the top of the food chain).
~Sharks can be as small as six inches and as large as 45 feet.
~Sharks can hear a fish swimming around in water from about 500 meters away.

Rotten shark from Iceland-image from the web.

~If you travel to Iceland, you may be offered an Icelandic Rotten Shark (Hakarl) as it is a traditional dish there.  Icelanders say it tastes like cheese.  Ugh!  Gag! There goes my love for cheese.  I will just take their word for it.  If you are not a fan of eating (cheesy) shark, you can go to Soloman Island in Fiji.  Eating sharks is forbidden there.
~It is estimated that 73 million sharks are killed each year for their fins. in order to make shark fin soup in Hawaii, Asia, and Australia.
~Did you know that sharks do not have bones?  They have cartilage instead.

Burton Post-Frilled shark

~The majority of sharks give birth to their young.  They are called pups.  Pups are born with the ability to take care of themselves right away.  Usually when they are born, they swim away as fast as they can so that the mother shark will not eat them.  There are a few species of sharks that lay eggs on the ocean floor.  The pups then hatch later on their own.
~Sharks swim practically all the time for their entire lives, they have to.  Swimming forces water over their gills so that oxygen will be delivered into the shark's blood stream.  A shark has to move continuously or it will suffocate and die.
~Great white sharks are said to be the deadliest sharks.  They can swim approximately 30 km per hour.  Great whites are warm-blooded.

image by  David Biesack-
Hammerhead

~Other highly dangerous sharks include the Tiger Shark, the Mako shark, the Bull shark, and the Hammerhead shark.
~The Tiger sharks are aggressive from birth.  The first pup to hatch (inside the mother's womb) will devour all the other pups but one.  That leaves one pup on each side of the womb.  That is cold!
~Sharks will never run out of teeth.  They have several rows of teeth so if one comes out, a new one will move into its place.

image by Kelvin Aitken-
Ghost shark

~Sharks have a keen sense of smell.  It is thought that a shark can smell one single drop of blood in 1 million drops of water.
~Sharks may be colorblind, although they seem to be able to see the color yellow and have been known to attack if they see it.  Probably a good idea not to have a yellow bathing suit.
~Sharks do get a bad wrap.  You are more likely to die from being struck by lightening or drowning than get attacked by a shark.
~The movie Jaws was based on a true story.  In 1916, four people were attacked off the coastline of New Jersey.

image by 
Dianne Bray Australia
-Goblin shark

~An excessive fear of sharks is known as galeophobia.  The word galeos is Greek for a certain type of shark.

~Sharks can detect electrical fields.

Our specimen was a dogfish shark.  You can read more about the dogfish shark here.  A brief description:  There are around 119 different species in the dogfish shark family.  They range from 6 inches to 45 feet long.  Their pups are born live from the mother's body, they can live in cool waters or deep tropical waters, and many are bio-luminescent (an animal or organism that has the ability to produce light from a chemical reaction-another example-a jellyfish).

Finally to the dissection (hack job) that we did.

This is our poor little dogfish shark specimen.  

The belly side.  We concluded that this is a female.

This is C14 slicing the shark open like a pro and getting it ready to dissect. 

After the insides were removed.

The inside!  

This photo and the next photo are of the intestines which are full of poo at the moment.  

This is the tail section, cut open to show cartilage.

I love my purple "Dr. Oz-style" gloves.  This is a shot of the teeth.
This dogfish's mouth was very stiff and hard to pull open.

Finally after about an hour and showing it to a few neighbors, we laid the poor thing to rest.  I would call this blogpost a very brief summary of these fascinating creatures. 

Shark facts
Shark world
Enchanted learning
Discovery Channel